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Foot binding (simplified Chinese: 缠足; traditional Chinese: 纏足; pinyin: chánzú), or footbinding, was the Chinese custom of breaking and tightly binding the feet of young girls to change their shape and size.
A small foot in China, no different from a tiny waist in Victorian England, represented the height of female refinement. For families with marriageable daughters, foot size translated into...
Feb 14, 2020 · February 14, 2020. For several hundred years, millions of Chinese girls had their bodies painfully misshapen to conform to a prevailing social expectation. Intact feet, girls were told, would...
- What was foot binding? Foot binding was the practice of tightly bandaging girls' feet in cloth to alter their shape. Their bound feet were contorted to only a few inches in length and were called lotus feet.
- How did foot binding start? It is said that the first recorded foot binding started from the Five Dynasties and Ten States Period in the 10th century, and it became prevalent in the Song Dynasty era (960–1279).
- What was the purpose of foot binding? Chinese foot binding. Women bound their feet in pursuit of so-called beauty and a good marriage. In ancient China, people took slightness as a symbol of beauty, as well as a 'cherry mouth', oval face, and slender waist.
- Was foot binding painful? Yes, the foot-binding process was very painful. Girls had to have their feet bound between the ages of 4 and 9 until their foot bones were set in their adulthood positions and the bandage could be unfastened.
Sep 27, 2017 · Foot-Binding was a practice first carried out on young girls in Tang Dynasty China to restrict their normal growth and make their feet as small as possible. Considered an attractive quality, the effects of foot-binding were painful and permanent.
- Mark Cartwright
- The purpose of binding the feet of young Chinese girls was to restrict their normal growth and make their feet as small as possible. This is becaus...
- Foot-binding started on girls aged from five to eight years old.
- Chinese girls had their feet bound by bending all of the toes except the big toe under the foot using strips of cloth. The strips were changed ever...
- Foot-binding in China only stopped in the early 20th century. There had been several attempts to ban the practice, notably in 1645, but these were...
May 22, 2017 · “In the conventional view, it existed to please men. They were thought to be attracted to small feet,” said Laurel Bossen, co-author of the new book “Bound feet, Young hands.”
Jan 16, 2021 · Shanghai is the best place in China to discover the cruel and oppressive custom of foot binding, which Chinese women endured for centuries in order to woo their husbands with dainty, 10-cm feet.
